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Introduction
The theme of this paper can be introduced in this way: does a pluralist approach to religion entail a pluralist approach to religion? My theme is not that odd, because I have two notions of pluralism in mind. There is what I will call ‘tolerant pluralism’ and what I will call ‘religious pluralism’. And thus my question is ‘Does tolerant pluralism re religion entail religious pluralism?’
In more detail, the problem I wish to explore begins from the recognition that tolerance toward and by religious believers is a highly desirable virtue, one that should be cultivated in any liberal state. Religious tolerance involves a form of pluralism: that is, the welcoming and fostering of religious diversity. Religious believers should be pluralists in this sense. Given that conclusion, the following questions arise. Can religious individuals be tolerant and exhibit pluralism while retaining full commitment to the truth of their own religious beliefs? Or, is it the case that society's demand for religious tolerance, and the pluralism that grows out of it, is really a call for revision of how believers see their faith? Is a demand for tolerance and the welcoming of diversity a demand to see all religious convictions as uncertain to a substantive degree? As I shall explain, the stance in the philosophy of religion that is labelled ‘religious pluralism’ contains a core commitment to agnosticism about the truth of religious beliefs. Is such agnosticism the necessary price of religious tolerance?
In two recent articles,1 the late Philip Quinn offered an argument for the following claim: tolerance between believers of the major world religions may be based on an appeal to religious scepticism. Appeal to religious scepticism, Quinn contends, is a sound means of dealing with opposition to religious difference fuelled by religious demands to create uniformity in belief and practice. Behind his argument is the portrayal of a clash between, on the one hand, injunctions in such religions to compel the whole of humanity to accept the religious truth and, on the other, our awareness of moral principles that forbid the visiting of harm and coercion upon others. A religious obligation to compel or persecute confronts the moral obligations bound up with the thought that tolerance is a virtue. Quinn...